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My personal favorite: "Hängematte" (hammock) – a hanging mat (something to be hanged + mat) While actually borrowed from Haitian "hamáka" (it entered German fi
by masswerk 11y ago
My personal favorite: "Hängematte" (hammock) – a hanging mat (something to be hanged + mat)
While actually borrowed from Haitian "hamáka" (it entered German first in the early 15 hundreds as "Hamaco" or "Hamach"), it was soon adopted in the form of a similar sounding native compound. (Also compare the Dutch "hangmat".) Just few native speakers realize, it's not what it reads.
- gpvos 11y agoThis word actually was originally formed in Dutch (hangmat, also from hamaka) and was borrowed by German slightly later.
- masswerk 11y agoYes, this also what I once learned at university, but newer accounts tend to skip this step of transition.
- gpvos 11y agoWhat I wrote was actually somewhat speculative. More recent Dutch etymology research ( http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/hangmat http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/hangmat ) says that there is an early German find Hengmatten [1627; Pfeifer], more than 40 years before the first Dutch find (1669). Still, Philippa et al. claim, the German must be a loan translation from Dutch, both because it is a sailor's term in the Dutch Golden Age, and because a direct German derivation seems less plausible as it would have more sound changes.